The Korean Journal of Medical Education is the official publication of the Korean Society of Medical Education. The instruction to authors not described thereafter follows the “Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Writing and Editing for Biomedical Publication” prepared by International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) “Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals” (http://www.icmje.org).

1. Content and publication type
It accepts original papers of research articles, reviews, short communications, medical education in Asian context, commentaries and opinions, personal views, teaching tips and other invited papers on the undergraduate, graduate and continuing medical education in the field of medicine, dentistry and nursing. Letter to editor is always welcomed on the published articles.

2. Research and publication ethics
For the policies on the research and publication ethics not stated in these instructions, “Good Publication Practice Guidelines for Medical Journals (http://kamje.or.kr/publishing_ethics.html)” or “Guidelines on good publication (http://www.publicationethics.org.uk/guidelines)” can be applied. If there are any ethical issues from the manuscripts, it should be first reviewed by Editorial Board and the recommendations should be processed by the Society. If anyone does not agree or accept the decision by Society in the process of ethical issues, those may be referred to the Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors (http://kamje.or.kr) or appropriate Committee of the corresponding institutes.

2.1. Duplicate Publication and Secondary Publication
The papers already published to other scientific journals or periodicals are not considered for publication. The published paper to this journal should not be submitted to other scientific journal. Secondary publication is only possible when it is compatible to the “Acceptable Secondary Publication” policy suggested in the conditions of secondary publication of the ICMJE Recommendations (http://www.icmje.org/urm_main.html).

2.2. Authorship and Author’s Responsibility
If any persons who do not meet following conditions, they may be placed as contributors in Acknowledgments section. Description of co-first authors or co-corresponding authors is also accepted if corresponding author believes that their roles are equally contributed.

Authors who meet all of following conditions can be listed: (1) substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; (3) final approval of the version to be published; and (4) agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

The corresponding author takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal during the manuscript submission, peer review, and publication process, and typically ensures that all the journal’s administrative requirements, such as providing details of authorship, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration documentation, and gathering conflict of interest forms and statements, are properly completed, although these duties may be delegated to one or more coauthors. The corresponding author should be available throughout the submission and peer review process to respond to editorial queries in a timely way, and should be available after publication to respond to critiques of the work and cooperate with any requests from the journal for data or additional information should questions about the paper arise after publication. Authors are responsible for the whole content of each article.

2.3. Conflict-of-Interest Statement
If there are any conflicts of interest related to individual author’s commitments or project support, it should be clarified and described in the manuscript.

2.4. Statement of Human and Animal Rights
Authors should keep the ethical and standard of Institutional Review Board of author’s institute and the Helsinki Declaration in 1975 (revised in 2008). In case of animal experiment, authors should keep the institutional or national guideline for the care and the use of laboratory animals.

2.5. Statement of Informed Consent and Institutional Review Board Approval
The manuscripts related to the human subjects or samples drawn from humans should receive the informed consent according to the rule of Institutional Review Board of author’s institute. Copies of written informed consent documents should be kept for studies on human subjects. For clinical studies of human subjects, a certificate, agreement, or approval by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the author's institution is required. If necessary, the editor or reviewers may request copies of these documents to resolve questions about IRB approval and study conduct. If manuscripts include clinical trials, the clinical trials registration number should be got after the registration to the WHO accredited registration centers such as CRiS (https://cris.nih.go.kr/).

2.6. Process for Managing Research and Publication Misconduct
When the journal faces suspected cases of research and publication misconduct such as redundant (duplicate) publication, plagiarism, fraudulent or fabricated data, changes in authorship, an undisclosed conflict of interest, ethical problems with a submitted manuscript, a reviewer who has appropriated an author’s idea or data, complaints against editors, and so on, the resolution process will follow the flowchart provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (http://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts). The discussion and decision on the suspected cases are carried out by the Editorial Board.

2.7. Editorial Responsibilities
The Editorial Board will continuously work to monitor and safeguard publication ethics: guidelines for retracting articles; maintenance of the integrity of the academic record; preclusion of business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards; publishing corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed; and excluding plagiarism and fraudulent data. The editors maintain the following responsibilities: responsibility and authority to reject and accept articles; avoiding any conflict of interest with respect to articles they reject or accept; promoting publication of corrections or retractions when errors are found; and preservation of the anonymity of reviewers.

3. Submission of manuscript
Manuscript should be submitted with copyright transfer agreement, author’s checklist, and certificate of English editing author via e-submission only (http://submit.kjme.kr). Copyright transfer agreement should be signed by all co-authors. Files for accompanying letters can be downloaded from the homepage of the KJME (http://kjme.kr). If the author is a non-native speaker, he or she should get English proofreading by a native speaker and the certificate of the English proofreading should be added at the end of manuscript.

4. Publication interval and receipt of manuscript
It is published quarterly in March 1st, June 1st, September 1st, and December 1st. Manuscript can be received at any time. The manuscript that does not keep the instruction to authors may be rejected before review. Certificate of receipt of manuscript is issued to the corresponding author via email.

5. Double blind peer review
Every manuscript received is circulated to two or three peer reviewers. The author’s name and affiliation is not disclosed during review process to reviewers. The review process can be repeated till three times if the request of revision is suggested by reviewers. If the re-review is repeated more than three times, it may not be considered for publication. If two reviewers do not agree to accept the manuscript, it may not be also considered for publication. Usually the first review process ends within one month. During peer review process, followings are required to reviewers: reviewers’ opinion should be objective; reviewers should have no conflict of interest with respect to the research, the authors and/or the research funders; reviewers should point out relevant published work which is not yet cited; reviewed article should be treated confidentially.

Statistical Review: If there are any complicated statistical analyses in the manuscript, it may be reviewed by statistical editor.

Manuscript Editing: The finally accepted manuscript will be reviewed by manuscript editor for the consistency of the format and the completeness of references. The manuscript may be revised according to the opinion of the manuscript editor.

6. Fee for page charge
For both unsolicited and commissioned manuscript, there is no submission fee or article processing charge of author-side until there is a policy change. All publication cost is provided by the Korean Society of Medical Education.

7. Role of the Editorial Board
The decision on the editing of the journal is made by the Editorial Board. The manuscript may be revised for the consistency of the editorial work as far as the content is not affected.

8. Copyrights and open access policy
The copyright and the transfer right of the digital content of the published paper and journal is owned by the Korean Society of Medical Education.
Corresponding author should agree to the copyright transfer during the submission process. The Editorial Board takes it granted that co-authors also accept the copyright transfer according to the acceptance by corresponding author. Corresponding author has a responsibility to get the permission of copyright transfer to the publisher.

It is the open access journal. Articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, when the original work is properly cited.

To use the tables or figures of KJME in other periodicals, books or media for scholarly, educational or even commercial purposes, the process of permission request to the publisher of KJME is not necessary. It also follows open access policy of PubMed Central <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/> and ScienceCentral <http://www.e-sciencecentral.org/>.
Deposit policy (Self-archiving policy) according to Sherpa/Romeo (http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/) are as follows: Author cannot archive pre-print (i.e., pre-refereeing); Author can archive post-print (i.e., final draft post-refereeing); And, author can archive publisher's version/PDF.

SUBMISSION AND REVIEW PROCEDURES

SPECIFIC GUIDELINE FOR WRITING MANUSCRIPTS

1. Writing manuscripts
Manuscript should be prepared in A4 paper with standard space of 30 mm from top, 25.4 mm from bottom, right side and left side. Font size should be 10.0 points, line space 200% or double space. All parts of the manuscript must be available in an electronic format; those recommended are: MS word file for text (use Times New Roman), and TIFF, JPEG, GIF, EPS, PPT file for graphics. Contrast degree of TIFF, JPEG, GIF, and EPS file should be equal to or greater than 600 dpi. Every manuscript should be written in English. Medical terminology should be followed by the Medical Dictionary available from: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/mplusdictionary.html.
Metric system of weights and measures and SI unit should be used. Page number should be typed in the center of the bottom of page.
Recommended word counts, number of references, tables, and figures for manuscript submitted to Korean Journal of Medical Education according to publication type is presented in Checklist. For extra number of word count, references, or tables and figure, it should be negotiated with editorial board.

2. List of content
The list of content is as followings: Cover page, title page, abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgements, References, Tables and Figures in separate page. If the number is required following order is suggested.

1., 2., 3.
1), 2), 3)
a., b., c.,
i), ii), iii)

3. Title page
In this section, the type of manuscript, title of manuscript, name of all authors and their affiliations, any conflict of interest, and financial assistance should described. If the authors are more than or equal to two, there should be comma between authors. If the affiliation of authors is not identical, the superscript number should be marked to the name and corresponding affiliation. MD and PhD should not be written. Bottom of title page, the address of corresponding author including name, telephone, fax and email address should be described. Additionally, the abbreviated title should be added. If it is relevant, presentation in the meeting may be described.

4. Title and abstract
Title, authors’ name and affiliation are centered. Title should be simple and lucid so that the content of the manuscript is easily disclosed. There should not be abbreviation or the title beginning with “The study on, or the discussion on” should be avoided. Abstract should be structured as followings: Purpose, Methods, Results, and Conclusion in the order named. The subtitle should be constructed as one paragraph. The description should be sentences. The length of the abstract should be less than 250 words. In the next line of abstract, less than or equal to five keywords should be written. The keywords should be selected from MeSH (Medical Subject Heading). The first word of the keywords should be capital letter.

5. Main text
This should in general, but not necessarily, be divided into sections with the headings: ‘Introduction’, ‘Methods’, ‘Results’, and ‘Discussion’. For details, please refer to article templates by type of manuscript. http://www.kjme.kr/authors/article_type_template.php

Guidelines for writing articles by type

Type

Abstract

Length guidelines (words)

References

Tables and figures

Original research

250 words maximum

Generally ≤ 3,000

Generally ≤ 30

Generally ≤ 5

Original research papers should generally be less than 3,000 words, but longer papers will be accepted if the context warrants the inclusion of more text. The papers have to be organized according to the Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion (IMRAD) structure. Both qualitative and quantitative research approaches are equally welcome.

Review article

250 words maximum

Generally ≤ 4,500

No limitation

Generally ≤ 5

Generally, review articles less than 4,500 words are preferred, but longer papers will be accepted if the context warrants the inclusion of more text. The papers have to be organized according to the Introduction, Main body, and Discussion structure.

Short communication

180 words maximum

Generally ≤ 1,500

Generally ≤ 10

Generally ≤ 3

These should generally be less than 1,500 words, but longer papers will be accepted if the context warrants the inclusion of more text. The paper has to be organized according to the Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion (IMRAD) structure.

Medical education in an Asian context

180 words maximum

Generally ≤ 3,000

Generally ≤ 20

Generally ≤ 3

The length of paper should generally be less than 3,000 words, plus an unstructured abstract of no more than 180 words. The paper has to be organized according to the Introduction, Main body, and Discussion structure.

Commentaries and opinions

None

Generally ≤ 1,500

Generally ≤ 10

None

Brief discussion articles focused on a particularly timely issue in health professional education can be up to 1,500 words in length and should include no more than 10 references.

Personal views

None

Around 1,500

None or < 10

No limitation

These include letters, personal essays, and cover art (photography, painting, textile work, and other visual media), among others.

Teaching tips

None

Generally ≤ 1,500

Generally ≤ 10

Generally ≤ 3

Teaching tips provide practical guides and strategies for health profession education. The structure of the manuscript can be of the author’s choice.

6. ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID)
ORCID of all authors are recommended to be provided. To have ORCID, authors should register in the ORCID web site available from: http://orcid.org/. Registration is free to every researchers in the world.

7. Acknowledgements, Funding, Conflicts of interest
Acknowledgements: The contributors (the contributors who helped administrative work, assisted in the research process or participated in proof-reading etc. can be described. The financial support and its contents should be described) can be described. Funding: The financial support and its contents should be described. Conflicts of interest: Any potential conflicts of the manuscript should be indicated.

8. Author Contributions
This section should clearly state each author’s contribution to the paper. It includes what and how each individual author has contributed substantially toward the following roles or tasks: conception or design of the work, data collection, data analysis and interpretation, drafting the article, critical revision of the article, and final approval of the version to be published.

9. References

1) Every reference in the reference section should be cited in the text.

2) The description of the journal reference follows the below description. Otherwise it follows the AMA Style Guide for Authors, Editors, and Publishers.

3) Maximum number of references depend on type of paper. Please refer to the table shows ‘Guidelines for writing articles by type’. The number of references each publication type is negotiable with editor. The periodicals should be described in the order of author, title, journal name, publication year, volume and page. For textbook, author, title, place of publication, publisher and publication year should be described in the order named. The journal name should be written according to the abbreviation of NLM Catalog. If not indexed in NLM Catalog, the official abbreviation of the journal should be followed by the list of title word abbreviation available from:
http://www.issn.org/services/online-services/access-to-the-ltwa/?letter=a.

4) In the textbook, the citation should be marked in square brackets such as [1] according to the order of appearance in the text. No superscript should be used. If the multiple references are cited, they are separated by comma such as [2,3]. When more than 2 references are cited at a given place in manuscript, use hyphens to join the first numbers and last numbers of a closed series [1-4]; use commas without space to separate other parts of a multiple citation.

Example: Citation in the text Among these, the Angoff method had been the most popular method used for multiple-choice tests by the 1990s [2].

5) The reference in the end of the manuscript should be in numeric order according to the order of appearance in the text. Title of textbook or paper should be written capital letter only for the first word.

World Health Organization. Equitable access to essential medicines: a framework for collective action. http://whqlibdoc.who.int/hq/2004/WHO_EDM_2004.4.pdf. Published March 2004. Accessed December 6, 2005.

1) Tables and Figures should be lucid and simple and should be cited in the text. The abbreviation used should be described as full name in the bottom of Tables or Figures.

2) Photos or figures should be marked as Figures meanwhile tables should be marked as Tables.

3) Number of Figures should be in a form of Fig. 1, Fig. 2. The first word of the title and explanation should be in capital letter. If there is more than or equal to two figures in same Figure number, it is written as Fig. 1A, Fig. 1B.

4) Table number is written in the form of Table 1, Table 2, and Table 3. Title should be in paragraph or phrase. The first letter of noun and adjective should be written in capital letter in title. There should be no vertical line in the Table. Abbreviation in the Table should be re-described in its full name. The mark should be used in the order of a) b), c) and explained in the bottom line.

11. Undescribed matters
Any items, issues or cases not described in the Introduction to Authors should be decided by the Editorial Board.